Video Transcript: Lesson 3
Welcome back to Writing for Ministry. So far, we have identified our audience. We have our picture that we've chosen to represent our ideal audience. Yours might be on a piece of paper. I am going to be doing it on the screen here. Here's my piece of paper, and here is the photo I've chosen to represent young people ages 16 to 20, because that's who I'm going to try to reach with my writing. Yours might be a little different, but we're going to develop this.
This week's lesson is know the wider conversation. In this lesson, we're going to choose what topic we're going to write about, and then look at the wider conversation around this topic. By doing this, we're going to clarify whose ideas we are building on, what tradition we are operating in, and if we ignore certain popular thinkers, we also let our readers know that this is an intentional choice and not an oversight.
Why is this important? There's a great way to understand writing that I came across in a little book called "They Say, I Say, which, if you ever have the chance to read? You definitely should. Imagine there's a big cocktail party. Now, I've never actually been to a cocktail party, but I know that it's opposed to a dinner party where people sit down at a meal. At a cocktail party, people usually mingle around and have many different conversations that are happening all at the same time, sometimes people are even having multiple conversations with different groups of people, or they might move from one group of people to another.
As a writer, it's important to remember that most of what you're going to write about, people have written about before you. These conversations have been going on for a long time, hundreds of years. In the case of the Bible, 1000s of
years. You are not the first person to start thinking about whatever it is your writing is going to be about.
So you walk into this party, and the first thing you need to do is join the group. For a little while, you just listen because you want to know what people have said about the subject that you want to write about. In a real party, you wouldn't just walk up and start talking as if you are the expert and all the other people don't know what they're talking about. But this is exactly what happens too often when people sit down to write.
To understand the wider conversation, you need to read. To do this, you have to read books, you have to read magazines, read blogs, read websites, follow people on Twitter. Hopefully, because we've already know in our previous lesson that it's important that you care about and love who you're writing to and what you're writing about, you are already doing some of these things. You are
already participating in the wider conversation in different ways, at least as a reader. Maybe even you're commenting on articles or reposting them on social media, and now you're ready to write a full piece. But also, there might be a little more work you need to do before you're fully prepared.
If the first problem of bad writing is that you don't know your audience, the second problem is that you don't know enough about what you're talking about. But how much is enough? There is so much information out there. How will you know when you're ready to shift from taking it all in to putting some of your own ideas out into the world? There is no hard and fast rule for this, but the way I gauge it, if I'm ready to start writing, is when I'm still encountering new books or authors. When you start engaging with an idea, you're going to jot down references to books or authors that you've never heard of. But eventually, you'll have less and less of that. You'll say, "Oh, yeah, this author is referencing that. That author is referencing this, and you know about all. You know all these references you've encountered. You're not encountering anything new.
To return to our idea of a cocktail party, you reach a point in the evening when you've been introduced to most of the important people in this conversation. You may not understand everything they say, and you will definitely not agree with everything they say. But you know who they are, and you know what they're saying.
The social conversation cocktail party is a complicated place. There might be one group of people over here who look down their noses at a group of people over there. They might both be talking about the same thing, but Group A might not think that Group B is having a valid conversation.
They may disagree about valid sources of knowledge, and sources of knowledge is a very important question. What do I mean with the term "valid sources of knowledge”, let's say you want to write about young people in a church, like I do. One conversation might value science and data and research studies. Another conversation might value a very strict or literal reading of the Bible verses that deal with youth. Another conversation might be about practical ways to make your church more attractive to young people. Another might be about the history of young people's involvement. Other conversations might deal with a subgroup like young women or young Asian men, or you could combine all these things in a very interesting and complicated ways, in a kind of hybrid of all these things, this is where things can get really fun and interesting. Where you, as a writer, put two people in conversation with each other who aren't normally in conversation. It's like you're calling from one group at the party to another, saying, "Come over here! You've got to hear what this guy is saying.
But different groups have different valid sources of knowledge, different schools, different primary texts, those magazines, conferences, traditions, important figures that they consider valid and important sources of knowledge. A lot of confusion in our world today comes because people are not clear on what they consider valid sources of knowledge.
Now, I'm not saying that one of these ways of writing about a subject is better than the other. I actually think that they all have value, but you do need to be clear on which of these conversations you want to participate in, and what you consider valid sources of knowledge within that conversation. After all, communication breaks down when you think you're talking about one thing, but your reader understands you from a different angle.
So here's your assignment. Last week you thought about the people, your audience. You thought about their age, their motivations, and experiences. This week I want you to think about who are your conversation partners, and the fun part is, at least partially, you get to choose. You may have to allow in significant voices, even if you disagree with them. But if they think, but if you think they add to your argument, you can bring in music lyrics, poems, movies, visual artists, politicians, and even your own experience working in ministry, and don't forget that your sources of knowledge should match up with who you're trying to reach. If you're writing to young people, you may not want to lean too heavily on systematic theology.
Let's dive into our example together. Draw a box around the picture of the audience you are trying to reach. Then draw five or six smaller circles around. Then write the names of your conversation partners, or if you're doing this online, maybe you can even find photos of them. And don't be afraid to include people you disagree with. In fact, your writing will be stronger if you do include them.
So let's say I want to write about the church, because I'm in the Reformed tradition. I feel like I have to include the writing of John Calvin and Karl Barth, but I also think the music of Michael Gunger has some interesting things to add. And there's a Gustave Gutierrez is a liberation theologian. I want to bring him in, and since so far I have all men, I think I need to add the perspective of Barbara Brown Taylor, and I'm going to add Martin Luther King Jr. to the mix too. These are the people that I'm going to draw on, talk to, argue with. Could I have picked others? Sure, but a lot of writing is about leaving things out. Don't try to write big, grand, comprehensive, all-encompassing things. Just like how writing writing to a specific audience will make your writing stronger, trying to engage a few specific conversation partners will make your writing much stronger.
In our next lesson, we're going to explore various forms that our writing could take, and how those forms influence what we're able to say, and how it's going to be received by our readers. Let's write.